We're born to pine, kin, and stone. Home's harsh tang to us never sours in the mouth.
Conversations on The Fish Pier After the Hurricane; Ferrying; Where From and Whither?
Nooses
In Mongolia, sheets of milky ice stretch over flat plains, go on and on and on, a monotony so strong, very little breaks it.
Ex Teacher
Mr. Morgan considered his situation. He couldn’t keep paying this much to Eleanor, not without finding another job, not while he struggled to feed himself with cheap cereal and canned garbage; he’d lost wi-fi and every day he went to the local library to browse job opportunities. Online tutoring wasn’t an option without an internet connection at home. And face to face teaching… he’d lost all taste for that. But he delayed applying for the bottom-dweller jobs. He perused zero qualification entry positions that made his soul quiver with fear. It seemed there remained a part of himself to lose.
Eleanor smirked and swung her legs around to leave their table.
5 Excerpts from “Fragments for Ken Smith”
…the men who survived the failure of media
Self-Checkout
I wonder when was the first time I knew I existed. Watching over the self-checkout in Price Mart, I’m wondering if this even counts as existence. What does one have to do in order to count as a life-form?
The Immovable I
Walking down my street in Seattle, I’m thinking of Baltimore again. I liked my street there, the way all the brick glowed when the sun set in the summer. Kunal and I had everything we needed there: the Brewer’s Art two blocks away for a weekly cocktail date, Viccino’s around the corner for a two-dollar slice, the patch of park around the Monument for taking in fall foliage. At Dooby’s, you could watch the students and remember how it felt to end classes at noon on a Friday.